Hi everyone,

I have got an offer to work on the design of a production studio of a radio station. I know that a production studio in a radio station would have a lot of voice over works, PSA’s, Commercials, Interstitials and station ids. And all these works require the “Voice of God” sound for vox. I shall mention the equipment that I plan to install. Do check out and pls tell me whether there is any weak link in the chain.

--Manley Reference Cardioid (For Voice of God) > D.W. Fearn VT1 > RME Fireface 800 interface > Protools 9 > PMC TBS2 Speakers

--4 * Audio Technica AT4040 (For interviews & guitars) > RME Fireface 800 Interface > Protools 9 > PMC TBS2 Speakers

My doubt is that will the fat sound from Fearn’s VT1 get a bit thinner when it passes through RME? If so, then any suggestions for an interface?

Thanks in advance

For voice work like this a well insulated room with excellent, well damped acoustics, are the priorities, closely followed by a very quiet mic and mic preamp (with plenty of gain). Pop shields are often important too, depending on the 'talent'!

'Voice of God' style promos generally require a lot of compression which will quickly reveal and emphasise poor room acoustics.

Hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Strongly seconded, start with the room, the room & the room.

TBH the rest of the chain really does not matter that much, radio (FM) brick wall filters at 15Khz, and AM is more like 4.5KHz so there is no real high end on transmission anyway, IF the transmitter site is colocated with the studio (sometimes happens) you will want to pick gear
designed for that rather nasty RFI environment (Especially if it is an AM site {shudder}).
Look at people like Alice, Sonifex and such rather then typical MI market music kit.

Re protools, fine but check what the station use day to day, a lot of them do not use protools much and you may be better picking a weapon where the training has already been done (BIG DEAL).

Ref mics, many radio presenters actually have fairly sucky mic technique surprisingly, and I have found something like an RE20 to sometimes give a better result (less proximity effect variations) then the more usual condensers.

Do note that you are NOT in general trying to make something sound like the radio station in the production room, the transmit processing chain has a LOT to do with the way the station sounds on air, you do not what to feed it something anything like as processed.

Back to the room, there is a massive amount of compression involved in radio, so the room needs to be **really** quiet (Including the air supply and extract), get noise performance written into the performance spec and have a retention in there sufficient to do the remedial work (You generally have to)!
Also the studio furniture matters for this, squeaky chairs are out and if doing interviews in there, be careful about the surfaces of any tables and such.

Regards, Dan.

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Audiophiles use phono leads because they are unbalanced people!

Fully agree with what Hugh and Dan said. I wouldn't try to make the sound bigger than life during production by compressing the hell out of it. Your material will see plenty of compression during broadcast.

A good room with suitable acoustic treatment, in conjunction with a decent mic (the ElectroVoice RE-20 or Shure SM7, but I also know a few big commercial stations here in the Netherlands using the Rode Broadcaster) are essential.

Cheers,
Frank

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Imagination is more important than knowledge - A. Einstein

Yes Of course. Firstly thanks Dan and Hugh. I definitely I agree with you both. Room treatment is the primary and most important thing. And the acoustics for the room is being designed by a senior engineer/acoustician. So I don't think I have to worry about that. I was asked by my client to submit an equipment list for approval.

In fact from my experience in the radio industry even I think that the production studio and the on-air/backup studios should be set-up in different ways. In all radio production studios that i have worked, usually a sound engineer cum producer would be working to produce materials required for the station(s). And such sound engineers are expected to know Protools. (Lighter softwares would be installed in the on-air and back-up studios for the jocks and news room ops) . There are many stuff like private commercials and public service commercials that go to a client for an approval before airing. In that case you need to produce that in the best sonic quality possible. In some situations all the competitors together in your city would go to big client to pitch for a single campaign. In those scenarios, my station(sales person) should be able to present a demo production with the best sonic quality (even though it be till 15KHz). I have definitely considered a Sonifex and a Platform for the backup and onair studios respectively.

Firstly in reply to Hugh, I am planning to use Stedmans Proscreen Filter. Please suggest if you know anything better. Dan, would not the RF interference be a big problem if the electric groundings are not done in the proper manner. I had that doubt when I selected the tube mic. I love that pic and that mic pre. Btw, is there a weak link in the chain I mentioned? Thanks a lot guys.

With FM, RF pickup is generally far less of an issue then it is with AM, but of course I advocate buying kit that does not have pin one problems (AES 48 is the standard to inquire about), and that is generally designed to work in a radio environment. There is a certain BIG NAME German mic manufacturer that causes fits in this respect, their very famous LDCs have more often then not got a common impedance coupling problem so severe that even a mile away from a big transmitter site, they sometimes just do not work without modification (See Neil A. Muncy, “Noise Susceptibility in Analog and Digital Signal Processing Systems,” presented at the 97th AES Convention of the Audio Engineering Society in San Francisco, CA, Nov. 1994. for the details of the sorts of problems you find).

At VHF RF, you generally find that the much advocated "technical earth" is not useful (far too much inductance) so you are probably better off looking at a mesh earth topology, see papers by Waldron, Muncy, Brown, Witlock and the like. IMHO it is a MUCH better (not to say safer and more reliable) way to approach the problem.

Regards, Dan.

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Audiophiles use phono leads because they are unbalanced people!

I have worked in a video post/v.o studio before where the U87 picked up the local FM pirate station on the block down the road, albeit only a filtered version between 12 and 15kHz, lol !

I am glad I don't have to answer the rest though, I have been out of radio quite a while, I can highly unrecommend the lower end Klotz broadcast desks, give me a Behringer mic preamp any day. Sourcing lower end kit that does the job, works for more than a day, that is producer friendly and is at reasonable cost is tricky and you end up having to engineer many solutions yourself. Broadcast/pre production studios these days try to do many things in one room (self op, round table, band recordings, Dj sets, Mc + Dj jobbies) and that is an engineering head scratcher at times when budgets are not of BBC magnitude. However judging by what you have chosen as you VO chain budget is a non issue.

Good luck.

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Mastering online mastering

Yes Dan, Even I have heard about that problem with the BIG NAME German LDC. Mesh topology will definitely be taken into consideration. I will definitely have a thorough look at Neil's paper as well. Thanks a lot. Another factor that makes me drive away from a tube mic is the time that it takes to warm up. In a broadcast system a client usually comes up with a commercial asking you to complete it in an hour.

And Safeandsound123, I dont like the round table system which is currently been followed in broadcast radios. You would know what its problems are. But no one actually cleared my primary concern. My doubt is that will the fat sound from Fearn’s VT1 get a bit thinner when it passes through RME? If so, then any suggestions for an interface?

The RME should be fine, but if you have a whole pile of cash, I personally like the AudioSciences cards for broadcast use, not too sure about what the ASIO drivers are like however.

I have a HDSP9632 and an old Hammerfall as well as an ASI card and they are all 3 of them fine.

Have a look at the papers by Waldron as well, http://www.fragrantsword.com/twaudio/ I do not always find myself in total agreement about why it works, but what he describes does work.

I wish that was the only mic from that company that was broken (Actually that one often also sometimes has a problem with the grill to case bonding that is half the issue), and I carry a couple of 6 inch jumpers with the screen on the female connected to the case and pin one left floating as a workaround that sometimes mostly works....

One of those in a 30V/m RF field is a 7 beer sort of topic! I still have the scars, worse they had hired the bloody thing so I was not allowed to fix it (Or pour lighter fluid on it and set it on fire, which did seem attractive at the time).

Regards, Dan.

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Audiophiles use phono leads because they are unbalanced people!

With regards to warm up time, just switch it on along with the Protools rig, by the time the computer is ready the mic will be.

Get one of those automatically switched power sockets that turns on the aux outputs when the computer starts drawing power and use it to run the preamp, mic and monitor speakers, that way just switching on the computer will bring up all the required electronics.

On another note, flood wire everywhere (And I mean everywhere, wherever there is a mains socket also put a dual network socket) with cat 5 or 6 FTP, that gives you 4 SCREENED pairs all over the site from a central patchbay, and there use is not limited to computers and phones, you can also send line level audio and video over them and even mic level audio is entirely possible.
This is probably the best investment in flexibility you can make these days.

Regards, Dan.

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Audiophiles use phono leads because they are unbalanced people!

And if you have a 'round table' cover the top with 5mm neoprene. So at least you can't hear nervous interviewees tapping the table top while they talk.

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.